London based artist Anouska Samms has publicly accused the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute for exhibiting a dress that is “something like a counterfeit” of her work in the ongoing “Costume Art” exhibition. In an Instagram post, Samms alleged that the dress, titled Corpus Nervina 0.0, bears resemblance to an earlier Nervina hair dress she developed with her one-time collaborator, New York based Israeli designer Yoav Hadari. The dress on display is credited solely to Hadari.
Samms said she first found out about the dress when tagged in a post by the Sarabande Foundation. “I was sitting in a cafe in east London, to then see a picture of someone standing next to my work in New York at the Met Gala, taking all the credit. Without my consent,” she wrote in her Instagram post. Hadari has acknowledged that Corpus Nervina 0.0 was inspired by the collaboration with Samms in an Instagram response to her accusation.
Samms often uses human hair to weave textiles in her practice, and her collaboration with Hadari began when they were both residents at the Lee Alexander McQueen Sarabande Foundation in 2023. The duo developed the Nervina hair dress featuring a handmade, hair based textile fabric developed by Samms. As per reporting by Artnet, Samms and Hadari signed a contract outlining the terms of their collaboration as well as any future production, which mentioned that Samms was the sole owner of the intellectual property of the fabric.
Hadari later contacted Samms in 2025 to inform her that the Met was interested in acquiring the Nervina dress. Samms spoke to Andrew Bolton, head curator at the Met’s Costume Institute to work out terms for the purchase, but the negotiations fell through. Samms’ lawyer Jon Sharples told Artnet that Hadari eventually offered two other pieces to the Met.
The Met’s wall text makes no mention of human hair and lists “silk, polyester, cotton, synthetic, resin,” as the materials used in the dress. The museum has since responded to Samms’ claim, requesting that she and Hadari resolve their differences before they take any action.
In response to Samms’ claim, YH studios offered the following comment: “Mr. Hadari conceived the Nervina Corpus concept in 2023 while developing his AW23 collection in London. It was fully developed by the time Ms. Samms was invited to collaborate with Mr. Hadari. She was tasked with developing a textile interpretation of an idea he had mocked up, using boards and swatches to communicate his vision that already included thread-on-white-dress construction and its silhouette.
The Nervina Corpus concept that started in 2023 evolved into a new design, Nervina Corpus 0.0, that does not use Ms. Samms’ protected textile. In design, especially in fashion, the same concept can evolve across multiple iterations, and materials or fabrication methods often change significantly.
The Nervina Corpus 0.0 has always been Mr. Hadari’s design, including its components, sensibility, and color scheme, which is aligned with his overall body of work.”
